Designing a wireframe for your website or mobile app is a good rule of thumb before initializing your design project. While wireframe ensures flawless task implementations, there are certain if and buts that often complicate the process.
A website or mobile wireframe is a low fidelity design component that helps you define the structure of the design. It is like a blueprint of the website or a mobile app that helps design and development team understand and execute the functionality of the application.
However, a number of care needs to be taken while designing a useful and effective wireframe design for websites or mobile apps. Here, I will talk about several mistakes that needs to be avoided while designing a website and mobile wireframe.
- Drawing the Wireframe Recklessly- A wireframe design is not finalized only by the designer but the role of the client is also crucial. Merely drawing the interfaces thinking it to be a low fidelity design will not serve the purpose of the wireframe. Prior to the process, design team needs to brainstorm what role each interface plays and how likely is it to affect the other interfaces.. But it is important to keep in mind that it is not a mockup, it’s just a preliminary sketch, but a type of design map.
- Focusing on the Actual Design and Functionality- This is the reason why it is crucial to understand when to use the “lo-fi “and “hi-fi ” wireframe design approach. If you focus on the design with selected font size, color and the background then you cannot consider the components like layout, navigation at this time. Elements which are not the part of the wireframe are not discussed and this keeps us decorating the wireframe with colors which is not the part of a wireframe design. Keep your wireframe design simple by defining components of Information Architecture, Layout etc.
- Use of the advanced tools- Although a number of designers practice wireframing using advanced wireframe design application, however, if we create a “lo-fi” model tools with multiple drawing and formatting functions, it is more likely to harm the project. The distinct characteristics these tools make a prototype look enhanced than we need at initial stage. Hence, it often advisable to design your wireframe using a pen and a paper and focus only on the functional aspects.
